Because of a high sensitivity, superior gradation, sharpness, graininess and color reproduction and a suitability for high-volume finishing operation, light-sensitive silver halide photographic materials are nowadays very widely used. When people take trips or join a variety of events, not only snapshots are taken by individuals but also various group portraits are taken, and kept in commemoration. Also, photographs have begun to be used for decoration of coin-operated lockers of railroad stations or shutters of stores. In other instances, photographs are stuck to name cards, and also postcards to which photographs have been stuck are nowadays used in New Year's cards or the like. Under such circumstances where photographs are increasingly used in a very variety of places in life, photographs have been sought to be easy and simple to handle, and also to have images with a much higher quality, in particular, to have visually sharp images.
In what is called photographic prints, baryta paper or paper supports coated with a polyolefin such as polyethylene have been hitherto in wide use. In particular, polyolefin-coated paper supports have been used in large number since processing chemicals do not soak into the supports to therefore enable rapid processing and drying.
Polyolefin-coated paper supports are coated with a polyolefin resin on both sides of the paper, and a white pigment such as titanium oxide is contained therein on the side on which silver halide photographic emulsion layers are provided, and it forms a reflective layer. Because of a difficulty in uniformly dispersing white pigments such as titanium oxide in polyolefins, a limit must be set to the amount of the white pigment to be dispersed in the polyolefin. As a result, with regard to the light reflected on the surface of a polyolefin layer, the diffusion of light in the polyolefin layer or the diffusion of light in the base paper beneath it has become non-negligible, so that there is a disadvantage that the sharpness can not be well improved.
Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) No. 69630/1978 discloses a technique in which a specific compound is incorporated into a white pigment layer of, e.g., a light-sensitive silver halide photographic material for areal photogrammetry so that the whiteness of white backgrounds can be improved in the course of processing and thereafter. Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 64265/1982 discloses a technique in which a white pigment and a dye are provided onto a polyolefin-coated paper support so that the sharpness can be improved. Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 60738/1983 discloses that images with superior sensitivity and sharpness can be obtained when a colorant-containing layer capable of being decolored upon processing, a white pigment-containing layer and a silver halide emulsion layer are provided on a support in this order. Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 177542/1984 discloses a technique for improving sharpness and sensitivity using a light-sensitive material comprising a support comprised of a substrate covered with a synthetic resin film and provided on one side thereof a hydrophilic colloid layer having a white pigment in a specific content and a silver halide photographic emulsion layer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,252,424 discloses a technique for achieving a high sensitivity and a superior sharpness using a light-sensitive silver halide photographic material comprising a polyolefin-coated paper support and provided on at least one side thereof i) a hydrophilic colloid layer containing a removable halation-preventive substance, 20 to 80% by weight of a white pigment and 5 to 35% by weight of hollow fine spheres of 0.1 to 1 .mu.m diameter and ii) a silver halide emulsion layer. Employment of these techniques can bring about an improvement in physical sharpness, but there has been the problems that it brings about only a small improvement in visual sharpness. In the case of supports having a very good smoothness, this difference can be small, but in the case of supports having resin coat layers on both sides this difference are not ignorable.
As for a reflective support provided with a resin coat layer, various patterns can be formed on its surface by using a cooling roll engraved with various patterns, after molten polyethylene has been applied to the surface of paper and while the coating is cooled to solidify. A typical example thereof is the "silk finish" on which patterns having a given form are arranged in regular order (hereinafter, the type of such embossing is called "texture").
Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. 53941/1982 discloses a polyolefin-coated paper for photography which is characterized by having a pebble-grained surface configuration wherein 20 to 35 cancavities-and-convexies (hills-and-dales) with a peak-to-valley distance of 5 to 20 .mu.m are present at an interval of 3 mm, and it is stated that such a surface configuration can achieve a preferable surface glossiness. It also discloses that the glossiness can be kept in the desired range with difficulty if the peak-to-valley distance is less than 5 .mu.m and images may become unsharp and undesirable if it is more than 20 .mu.m, and also that the glossiness may become too high if the number of the hills-and-dales with a peak-to-valley distance of about 5 to 20 .mu.m is less than 20 and the mattness may become too strong and undesirable if it is more than 35. Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 280142/1990 discloses that a light-sensitive color photographic material comprising a support having 4 to 20 per mm of periodical hills-and-dales on its surface makes any uneven color and uneven density inconspicuous when precessed so as to produce uniform colors. This publication, however, neither mentions nor suggests that the periodical distribution of hills and dales may greatly affect the visual image quality.
Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 166833/1992 discloses that a silver halide photographic emulsion layer having a good matt gloss and free of coating mottles can be obtained using a photographic resin-coated paper support comprising a substrate coated with a resin on its both sides, having an SRa (surface roughness) of 0.3 to 3.0 .mu.m and in which the power spectrum of a spatial frequency of 1 to 100 .sup.-1 mm has a height of not more than 1.2 times the height of a variable peak in frequency components adjacent each other. This technical publication, however, is only discloses the conditions under which no coating mottles may occur, determined on the basis of the relationship between the frequency distribution of surface irregularities of a base paper and the occurrence of coating mottles, and neither mentions nor suggests the relationship between the frequency distribution of surface irregularities of a base paper and the image quality, that is questioned when the hydrophilic colloid layer containing a white pigment is provided between a resin coat layer and a silver halide photographic emulsion layer.
The present inventors have disclosed in Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 246642/1992 that a light-sensitive silver halide photographic material comprising a reflective support in which Wiener spectrum has at least two peaks in the region of a spatial frequency of from 2 to 20 mm.sup.-1 and satisfying a specific relation between a maximum intensity and a second peak, makes it possible to achieve a moderate glossiness and a superior detail representation. They, however, have neither mention nor suggest the problem caused when the hydrophilic colloid layer containing a white pigment is provided between a resin coat layer and a silver halide photographic emulsion layer.